Dean Reed: Heartthrob Of Soviet Masses

MOSCOW (UPI) - You can keep the Beatles and forget Frank Sinatra. The Led Zeppelin are nowhere in
the Kremlin, man. In the Communist Party, The Who are merely, the who? Mick Jagger, the Pink
Floyd and Elvis Presley are forbidden practitioners of bourgeois culture.

But Dean Reed, the famous American pop star and heartthrob of the Soviet masses, is something
else again.

Dean who?

Well, Dean Reed is arguably the most famous American in the Soviet Union after President Ford.

Bemedaled matrons in boxy, masculine suits melt like teenagers in his presence and shyly beg for
his autograph. Teenyboppers swoon when he comes on stage in shimmering shirt and velvet pants, and
squeal when he wiggles his hips.

People line up all night to buy tickets for his concerts. His records, four LPs so far, sell by
the millions according to the state monopoly, Melodiya.

His name is plastered all over town in announcements of his fourth concert tour here. Most
Americans who bother to notice think Reed is a Russian with an anglicized name.

In fact, he was born 37 years ago in
Denver, Col.,
and attended the University of Colorado.

Reed comes on like early Paul Anka, crooning into a microphone as scores of young girls sigh
"O Djeen" with mascara running down their cheeks.

Where else could a pop star knock them in the aisles by singing
"My Yiddisher Momma"
to an enraptured lady in the fifth row?

The boyish-looking Reed is clean-cut in appearance and in politics too, as far as the Kremlin is
concerned. He is truly one of the converted who follows the party line but says with an engaging
smile: "I don't like to argue about politics. I'm just a guy who likes peace and people."

Backed by an East German band, Reed sings mostly love ballads with some mild rock and "protest
songs" denouncing "imperialism and capitalism."

He said an "autobiographical" movie called
"Blood Brothers"
is this year's most popular film in East Germany. In it, he appears as a pacifist cowboy who joins
an Indian tribe. He parallels the film with his own life as a pacifist American joining the East
Germans.

Reed comes from a conservative background. He said
his father
- who lives near San Diego, Calif., "but wants to move to Arizona so he can vote for Goldwater"
- strongly disapproves of his politics.

He made three records in the United States but moved to Latin America when they proved more popular
south of the border that at home. There he became involved with revolutionary movements and became
a committed Marxist,
he said, because of the contrast between wealth and poverty.

Later he moved to Rome and made several spaghetti Westerns, some of which made him well-known in
Poland.

Reed strums his guitar and sings at concerts and youth festivals throughout Eastern Europe, in
the process winning the Czechoslovak and Hungarian peace prizes and a medal from the
Czechoslovak Young Communist League.

He appeared in the United States earlier this year at concerts organized by the Communist party
and other "progressive" groups.

Soviet fans say they cannot believe Reed is not as famous in his homeland as he is here.

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